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Comment by rjett | Hacker News Reader

Joking? I'll bite anyways...

There has been myriad research detailing the adverse effects of children (aka developing humans) viewing violence, sex, drugs, etc. I think four year-olds safely qualify as developing. If stuff like this isn't alarming enough, consider a more extreme example like the two year old in Indonesia who smokes a couple packs of cigarettes per day http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/05/31/indonesia.smokin... . You're hurting these kids' chances (of living a healthy life/of relating to their peers/of being successful/ etc)

For those hounding me for citations, here's something I quickly rustled up:

From an economist: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22743802/Learning-Violence-Young

From a social psychologist: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2038214/Video-Game-Violence

From a the Institution of Youth Development in Washington DC: http://www.scribd.com/doc/33292276/Violence

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I don't think it's fair to compare playing a video game in which one does bad things with actually smoking in real life.

As to the studies, I've read some such studies and deemed them invalid or unscientific. Can you cite one that you would stand behind as rigorous and accurate?

[Edit: Can you site ONE study that you will STAND BEHIND? One you've read in full. Not three studies you just googled. I can google studies too...]

You are on very shaky ground with this line of argument, which attempts to cast aspersions at basically all of psychology because of controversies unrelated to the the issue we're actually talking about.

Yes, there are questions about whether playing "Mature"-themed games actually causes problems for teenagers.

Yes, there is an effort, probably ill-conceived, to restrict access to "Mature"-themed games for teenagers.

We are not talking about teenagers; we're talking about a 4 year old.

One simple axis of argument to observe here is the Harvard (Kutner & Olson) vs. Iowa (Anderson) debate; Kutner's book points out that much of the psych research is methodologically flawed. But both Kutner and Anderson agree that exposure to very violent games is associated with increased aggression. Kutner just doesn't want to see all games demonized for all pre-adult age groups.

You've used the weasel words "associated with" which are common in psych studies.

One thing "associated with" does NOT mean is "caused by". It's consistent with, say, people first becoming aggressive and then taking up violent games afterwards. And it's consistent with taking their violent games away from them making them more, not less, aggressive.

Anyway, just because two people from a debate agree doesn't make something true. And just because psychological studies are flawed for irrelevant reasons doesn't mean they aren't also flawed for relevant reasons. Feel free to cite a study you'd like to stand behind...

Something's gone pear shaped in this discussion if I have to weasel my way through it. Sorry. I'd just like to point out again that it's not like we're arguing about anthropogenical global warming here. Developmental psychology, along with (I hope) common sense, suggests very strongly that 4 years olds are not 14 year olds.

I've cited researchers (both with litanies of studies) downthread.

Developmental psychology, along with (I hope) common sense, suggests very strongly that 4 years olds are not 14 year olds.

Which cleverly dodges the question at hand. Cartoon violence and/or sex: harmful to kids or not?

The big problem with most of the psych studies indicating "harm," for some definition of harm, is in the controls. Typically they'll sit some kids down in front of an Xbox for a measured period of time, and monitor them for signs of aggression and aberrations in empathy. The control group consists of another group of kids sitting in the next room playing with crossword puzzles.

The control groups in these studies should consist of kids running around outdoors playing Cowboys and Indians, but that never, ever seems to occur to the psych majors. It's almost as if they initiated their studies to demonstrate a preordained conclusion, or something.

> You've used the weasel words "associated with" which are common in psych studies.

That's what psych studies do - they establish correlations. People are not crash-test dummies that can be produced identically in quantities and experimented on. Different people respond to experiences differently, but that doesn't mean you can't say that those experiences are generally harmful or generally beneficial.

Nobody claims that psychology has the predictive power of physics, but that doesn't mean it has nothing useful to say.

> That's what psych studies do - they establish correlations.

And that's why they are useless. Because correlation isn't causation. Or in other words, because "aggressiveness is correlated to GTA" is fully compatible with GTA reducing aggressiveness. Whenever correlation studies try to give conclusions, they are reliably compatible with the opposite of their conclusions, so they are just nonsense...

Sports participation is linked to aggression (for example, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118735417/abstrac... and http://hk.humankinetics.com/jsep/viewarticle.cfm?aid=8936)

What if increased aggression is good for you? I seem to remember another study about men with long middle fingers (indicating high testosterone levels) having a significantly higher income.

Naturally the rest of society wants us to be docile, but it is not necessarily what is good for you. Also, the people with the guns usually win and set down the law. "We can talk about everything" is a lie.

Do you have kids?

Speaking of smoking, I wonder what's the author's opinion regarding alcohol. I and other friends have drunk (or better said tasted) wine and beer since we were kids (less than 10 years old) and we haven't become alcoholics. Sure, I know a couple of people who drink a bit too much at parties, but still, I don't think that forbidding them to drink until they were 21 would have avoided this. If someone wants to shoot himself in the foot, I don't see how some law can stop this.

I think this is true. There is even ample evidence that relaxed approaches to alcohol does not have an adverse affect. In France, for example, it is (or was) pretty common to offer children small amounts of wine or beer at a relatively young age.

My family had a similar approach and I turned out ok :)

citation needed

Start here, with a semi-skeptical take, and follow the names to the researchers websites and to SCHOLAR.GOOGLE.COM. There's controversy, but this isn't fringe science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Childhood

What do you mean by fringe science? The authors in that wikipedia article claim most studies have been flawed, and even their own can't show causation.

I also still remember being a kid, which gives me a somewhat biased opinion, I guess.

My own non-scientific guess would be that peer pressure is more important. Personally I was never much into watching gruesome movies, for example, but for a while it seemed to be a test of courage among other kids my age. So essentially kids might have been watching more gruesome stuff than they really liked because of peer pressure. Or they really liked that stuff - then I wonder why?

Also as kids we loved Wild West stories, would dress up as Cowboys and Native Americans and shoot around with toy guns. The totem pole and the associated torturing were a particular favorite. We never mistook play for reality, though (no real torturing).

Yeah, me too, but that didn't happen when you were FOUR, right?

Let me disclaim right here that the kind of bad parenting on display in this article is of approximately the same valence as the bad parenting I inflict on my kids on a weekly basis. I'm just saying it made me queasy is all. The kid, who is clearly awesome, is going to be fine.

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